TV jeebies

Why can’t real life be more like a television show? So unfair.

While my friends are completely delightful, I would relish the opportunity to spend my days lolling around a bar or coffee shop Happy Endings, Friends or Sex and the City style exchanging snappy one-liners with my super trendy, zeitgeisty pals in fabulous clothing, not having a real job and not turning into a fatty boombatty from all the cosmos or lattes I’m drinking.

‘Oh my God, Samantha, I can’t believe you’d sleep with Tony Abbott.’

And why, when I sing karaoke do people not jump up and clap along and spontaneously dance to my crooning, like they would if I were a contestant on the Voice.  By the way, why won’t Delta cover up her side boobs? – makes me puke.  Sorry, I digress.  The reason people don’t clap along when I sing might have more to do with the fact that it sounds like someone is twisting a cows’ udder around a rose bush than the fact that I don’t exist in a tv show.  But then again, the inability to sing never stopped old Madge now, did it?  And besides, Pump up the Jam is more of a rap than a song, so I’m still good.

And when I’m cooking things, why do my dishes look like poop on a plate, with a side of garden clippings, not like those peeps on My Kitchen Sucks Balls.  And tell me how come they never look red and sweaty when they’re cooking?  I generally look like a beetroot when I’m pottering around in the kitchen: my least favourite room in the house, other than the epiphany toilet which is our modern day outhouse, used by boys only – yucky.

The wistfulness for living in a teev show came after what started as what was meant to be a completely uneventful Sunday morning walk with the dog, but resulted in a concussion, a grazed chin and a mushed knee-cap…mine, not the dogs. In my defence, it had been raining and the ground was slippery, but I am also atrociously clumsy.  Always have been.

I have talked about very mild super powers or VMSPs before and I should include another one on my list: the ability to trip over nothing.  I have broken my toes/ feet three times from walking into doorways, running in a straight line and getting my toe caught in a gym’s cross trainer then fainting; I burned my leg so badly I had to wear burns dressing for three month; and I am usually harbouring some sort of large bruise on my person from walking into things or falling over things or just falling over and no, there generally isn’t alcohol involved.

Goddamn you ZD! You still look cute when you fall over in the most heinous outfit known to man.

It was when I was rolling around on a wet driveway, trying to stop a squirmy spaniel from running away and thinking ‘late-early thirties is too old to cry when you’ve hurt yourself’, that it dawned on me that if I’d stacked it on a tv show, it would have been a little bit more cute, quirky and endearing and I’d probably be Zooey Deschanel and have perfect winged eyeliner, even though I was just walking the dog.

Why oh why can’t my physical misfortunes be charming like those delightfully klutzy tv characters – not only would people stop saying ‘Claire, why are you such a spaz?’, but I also probably wouldn’t suffer grazed knees – an injury no one over the age of 12 should suffer.

So what happens on the teev that you wish happens in real life? Or am I the only square-eyed tragic?